Travis had informed me that he hid the key under the railing leading to the front door, taped to the bottom, right near the third step. After grabbing my one suitcase from the car, I felt along the bottom of the railing but couldn’t find the key. I did, however, come across something slimy and quickly jerked my hand away. A slug fell to the ground and squirmed slowly off. Grimacing now, I tried the other side of the stairs and found the taped key almost immediately. Another thunder boomed loudly above me at the heels of a lightning flash, and the rain started again just as I opened the screen door in front of the inner solid one.
The interior of the cabin was fairly nicely furnished, but almost everything had sheets over it. After retrieving my groceries from the car, I pulled one sheet off at a time to find an expensive brown leather couch facing a rather wide bow window, a love seat under the window, a wet bar with three stools, a fire place, a refrigerator—with nothing in it—luckily I stopped to get some groceries before coming here—and an electric stove with a microwave directly above it. After whipping off all the sheets, I sent dust flying into the air and a dusty smell filled the entire interior of the cabin. The rain was coming down hard again, so I was unable to open any window to air the place. But it really didn’t matter. A timeworn musty odor rose from the dust, reminding me distinctly of the pungent smell of my parents’ cellar when I was a kid. This was a fragrance I liked, and it actually helped to lighten the heavy mood weighing down my heart.
The lure of the thunderstorm overtook me and I stood in front of the bow window facing the lake. It was too dark now to see anything. Just a smooth blackness staring back at me. When lightning flashed, however, suddenly, for a few seconds I could see the lake—just black and smooth, with only small ripples of the raindrops pounding the surface.
I turned my attention back to the interior of the cabin. There were five doors. One led to two upstairs bedrooms, a second lead to what was obviously the master bedroom on the same floor, a door next to it led to a smaller bedroom, a third led to the bathroom, and a fourth led down to the basement. I saw only a single bare bulb at the bottom of the stairway, and decided I wouldn’t be searching down there tonight. The last of the doors was locked, and I assumed Travis didn’t want anyone entering the room. I grabbed my suitcase and threw it on the bed of the master bedroom, and a major puff of dust flew off the bedspread. A large, about three feet in diameter, dreamcatcher was nailed to the wall above the headboard. Most of the feathers were brown, but a few blue ones were mixed randomly amongst them. The beads were all black with one blue one. Travis must have had a few nightmares out here, I thought and chuckled. Hopefully, it would also keep away the nightmares that had been plaguing most of my evenings lately.
Taking the bedspread out the back door, the side facing away from the lake and toward the forest, I shook it out quickly before it got too wet. The night air smelled raw and cool, nothing at all like the arid desert heat of Las Vegas. Before heading back in I took a few seconds to look into the forest as a lightning flash lit up the sky.
That was when I noticed a pair of eyes glowing about two feet into the brush at the border of the lawn and about six inches off the ground. My heart picked up its beat one level, but I shook my head and went back inside. It was simply a possum or porcupine or raccoon or any of the other varmints that inhabited the Wisconsin forests.
After throwing the bedspread back on the bed, I emptied the contents of my suitcase. Just a couple of pairs of jeans, two pairs of white shorts, four t-shirts, some underwear and tube socks, and one polo shirt. I wasn’t planning on running into anyone, other than the lady in the green floral dress back at the country store, during my entire sabbatical of solitude. I set my camera on the night stand. I brought it thinking I could take some good nature shots. Then I took out the cell phone charger and plugged into a wall outlet—thank god Travis had electricity lines running to the cabin from the road. I couldn’t imagine staying out here with nothing but gas lanterns and candles to keep the night outdoors. I checked the signal on the cell phone before plugging it into the charger. It still read no bars. Travis had told me that he only received a signal—one bar, sometimes two—at a certain location on the roof. He had a ladder lying on the ground next to the cabin when I needed to climb up there. I had told him I would call as soon as I arrived, but with the rain coming down hard, and with the lightning flashing every ten seconds, I wouldn’t be climbing up to any roof tonight.
My watch read twenty minutes past nine. Even though I was exhausted from the trip—the long drive from Vegas, getting lost, the storm—I wasn’t quite ready to call it a day. I pulled one of the three novels I brought with me, The Other by David Guterson, and plopped down on the couch to read for a while. The rain splattering against the windows, with the lightning flashing and thunder rolling outside, gave a perfect ambience for relaxing. I felt better already. Maybe Travis was right about my coming to use his cabin. A couple of weeks alone was just what I needed. Life, I was told by my father when I was a teenager, was a philosophy of both give and take. For now, I would take.
The wind picked up outside and the cabin creaked ever so subtly, and thunder soon followed immediately on the heels of the lightning. I got up, turned out the light, and watched the show from the front bow window—the one facing the lake. The waters on the lake were angry now, the waves running in every direction as if they were looking blindly for a way out. One might think I’d be frightened in this situation—all alone in a cabin in the woods, with a major storm on my first night. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t scared at all.
But that was soon to change . . .
I went to bed after the thunder diminished to a slight occasional rumble from the distance, and fell asleep while the rain continued to patter against the roof and windows. I recalled from my childhood in Wisconsin that these storms could last for hours. And the rain was more than just soothing, it was a sleeping pill. When my eyelids closed, within a minute, I dozed peacefully.
* * *
Someone was screaming in my dream. And another person was yelling. My first thought was that the dreamcatcher above the headboard was a fake and I was having a nightmare, when I woke up completely and realized the screaming and yelling were actually coming from outside. Which was much worse than a nightmare, as I was miles from the nearest farmhouse and fellow human being.
Immediately jolting to full wakefulness, I jumped out of bed. And stood perfectly still while I listened, my heart beating like a jackhammer in my chest. A man and a woman were having a major argument, but I couldn’t make out what was being said. If I had been in the city, this would have been nothing more than an annoyance, but I was supposed to be entirely alone in a cabin deep in the Chequamegon National Forest. After calming my heart rate half way back to normal, I walked over and slowly opened the window, cringing each time it squeaked.
The man and woman were at the cabin across the lake. I could see lights on within the building, but they were both outside. They were visible on occasion though the trees that stood in front of this side of the cabin, but those trees blocked my view most of the time as the couple paced back and forth in an erratic pattern. Obviously, Terry had yet to clear all the trees. A porch light lit up the parking lot. I could hear them more clearly now that the window was open, but still couldn’t quite make out what they were arguing about.
I grabbed my camera from the nightstand, attached its 500 mm zoom lens, and headed outside to have a better look. The night air was now calm and cool. The sky above was crystal clear and the stars were brilliantly lit. I hadn’t seen so many stars since I had moved to Vegas, the brightest city in the world, so bright it was the only city they could see at night from the space shuttle. I noticed a dirt path leading from the cabin down to the lake. Walking barefoot, and still only in my underwear, to the edge of the hill to where it proceeded down to the lake, I stopped and raised the camera to my eye. I had a clear shot of them from this new vantage point.
The two of them were really going at it, wal
king around in agitation and stopping only to shake a fist or point a finger at one another. I still couldn’t make out exactly what they were fighting about, but it was one of those serious fights that a neighbor would definitely think about calling the police. If that neighbor was in the city and if that neighbor had a phone. Of course, I could find the ladder in the dark, climb up to the roof with my cell phone and wander around in search of the tiny area that caught the signal, but I wasn’t about to attempt it. I could see myself falling and breaking my neck, while the two of them kissed and made up across the lake.
A slight breeze would blow my way, and some sentences reached me.
“Why did you do it?” I heard the guy yell.
“You did it, not me!” the girl screamed back. “Quit . . .” And the breeze would die for a few seconds.
I watched through the zoom lens as they continued to yell at each other, the guy getting too close sometimes and balling his hand into a fist. What would I do if he hit her? It would take me how long to find my way around the lake to their side? And in the dark. The only thing I could do —and would—was to yell that I was over here. But for now I remained silent, standing in nothing but my underwear, under a large oak tree. Every so often a drop of used rain would slip off a leaf and land on my head or bare shoulders. I didn’t even mind. It made me feel alive—for the first time in a long time.
They both appeared to be in their thirties. I zoomed in a little more on her. She was a blonde with hair just past shoulder length, and beautiful. Even with the unappealing expression of anger on her face, she remained breath taking. And somewhat familiar. I couldn’t quite place the face, but I definitely knew her from the past. From high school, maybe.
The mosquitoes weren’t a problem, as they usually just bothered you around dusk, so I had no problems standing there watching them—just shifting the weight on my feet to keep comfortable. At times a voice would carry across the lake, and I could make out phrases but not enough for me to figure out exactly what the argument was about. He was accusing her of something, but she claimed that he was the one that did it, whatever it was. I kept my attention on his fists; yet, even though he made threatening moves, he never hit her.
It was then I noticed there was no car in the gravel parking area next to the cabin. There was no way anyone would walk way the hell out here to the middle of nowhere.
Unless somebody dropped them off.
After about fifteen minutes she stormed back into the cabin, slamming the door behind her. He stood outside for a few seconds, took a deep breath and then followed her inside. I could see them in the front picture window facing the lake, continuing the argument. Now that they were inside with obviously all the windows shut, I couldn’t hear anything at all. After another five minutes they sat down at a table and their expressions seemed to calm at bit, and after another five minutes they got up and disappeared from view. Then the lights went out.
I stood there another minute, just listening, but the only thing I heard were the captured raindrops escaping from the leaves of the trees to the leafy ground below. Frogs croaked down by the lake, thanking the rain god for tonight’s storm, and begging for another. An owl hooted once deep in the forest to my right.
I turned to go back inside, since they seemed to have made up, when the shiny eyes once again caught my attention in the forest. The moon was out and when the light hit the eyes just right, I could easily see the glow. I raised the camera to zoom in on it, but whatever it was disappeared into the forest before I could focus the viewfinder. I shrugged and walked back inside. Turning on the light, I realized I was still in my underwear and smiled. It was great to be alone—with absolutely no inhibitions. And with no one to judge you. I felt something moving on my leg and found a wood tick crawling on my left thigh. It hadn’t attached to me yet; I simply plucked it off. I knew you couldn’t kill a wood tick by stepping on it, ergo its name, so I allowed it to crawl around in my hand until I found a book of matches in one of the cupboards. After turning on the porch light I took it outside. I set the tick on the top step, lit the match and held it against the tick’s hard body. I thought I heard a quiet scream before it died. Wood burns.
I turned my attention one more time into the forest in search of those watchful eyes, and, not seeing any, sighed and headed back inside.
Within a minute, I was safely back under the covers of Travis’s king-size poster board bed.
And thought about that beautiful blonde from across the lake. Where had I seen her before? It had to have been from when I lived here. I left when I was twenty-one, and that was seventeen years ago.
It took me a little longer this time to fall asleep.
* * *
I dreamt about my wife, or I should say, my ex-wife. We were having a volatile argument, about what I hadn’t a clue. Just like the guy across the lake earlier, I formed a fist out of my right hand. But unlike the guy across the lake, I noticed my fist flying toward my ex-wife’s face. I wanted to stop it from reaching her, but somehow I couldn’t. In slow motion my fist slammed into her cheek and immediately her head shot backwards, but also in slow motion. I looked at my hand in horror, not believing what it had just done. My ex-wife had her hand up to her face, where I had struck her, and rubbed her cheek. Her eyes glared at me with disbelief behind them. I tried to apologize, but the words, “I’m sorry,” stuck in my throat. What had I done? Why had I done it? Then she lowered her hand and pointed an accusing finger at me. A low-toned yell started from her mouth, unlike anything I ever heard before. It slowly built into a loud piercing wail.
I awoke suddenly—and for the second time that evening the wailing sound from my dreams was actually emanating from outside. This time, though, from the opposite side of the cabin, the side facing the deep forest. The last time I had jumped from my bed, but this time I remained under the covers, actually pulling them up and over my nose. This wail sounded as though it was from a woman. But it didn’t quite sound human. I hadn’t closed the window facing the lake when I went to bed. If I had closed the window, the wailing sound probably wouldn’t have been loud enough for me to hear in my sleep. And maybe I wouldn’t have awakened till morning, blissfully ignorant of what was happening outside right now.
And as I lay under the covers, pulling them tightly up to my eyes, I silently and desperately wished I had.
My thoughts went back in recent time to whether or not I had locked the door after I burned the wood tick outside. I knew I hadn’t. Who locks a door when you are in the middle of nowhere?
And the wailing came closer.
It was the caterwaul of a woman in deep emotional pain, but not quite the sound of a woman.
What if it was the beautiful blonde from across the lake? What if he really did beat her after the lights went out? But how had she gotten over to this side? Did she walk all the way around? And why? She didn’t know I was even here. Unless she saw me turn the lights on when I burned the wood tick. What if she needed my help?
But that sound was not quite the sound of a woman. And she wasn’t saying anything; she just wailed in pain, a pain that comes from deep within a soul.
But, again, not quite human. A woman just couldn’t quite make that sound.
What other animals did they have here in the Wisconsin woods? Deer, black bears, wolves. Could it be a wolf? No. I had heard the howl of a wolf, and this wail was from no wolf.
The wailing got closer, almost to the other side of the cabin. It would start in a low guttural growl and slowly rise into a high-pitched wail. A chill continually ran up my spine, and my stomach tightened so hard I thought I might be constipated for a week. Again, I got the sense that the wail was from an emotional and not physical pain.
I forced myself out of bed, and this time I pulled on a pair of jeans and slipped a t-shirt over my head. I even put on my socks and tennis shoes. In case I needed to run—fast. I would stealthily creep to the other side of the cabin and look out the picture window on that side. I hadn’t shut my bedroom doo
r, but I peered cautiously around the corner toward the picture window, to make sure she, or whatever it was, wasn’t looking in. She wasn’t. And I breathed a sigh of relief. I would have filled my drawers if she, or whatever, had been peering back at me from just the other side of the glass.
The picture window on this side was smaller, about half the size of the bow window facing the lake, and started about belly high. I got down on my hand and knees and crawled toward it, the wailing still out there, close. I’d say at about the edge of the forest where the clearing cut for the cabin reached the first trees. Maybe twenty, twenty-five, yards away.
For the second time that night my heart jackhammered in my chest. Where was all this solitude and quiet I was supposed to be experiencing? This night was not making my life any more peaceful. I would have a word or two with Travis about this. First thing tomorrow morning I was going to climb onto the roof and call him. Yes, sir, he had some explaining to do.
I reached the bottom edge of the window. I took two slow breaths and proceeded to peer around the side of the casement. The forest was a black wall beyond the cabin’s yard. The moon had obviously set, thus leaving no light outside at all.
Whatever was wailing
—not quite human—
was just on the other side of the tree line.
I let my eyes adjust a bit, and I could make out the brush at the edge of the yard. They jostled now and then, and if whoever
—whatever—
just walked forward a little bit more, I could see what it was.
Then the wailing stopped.
I remained frozen for a minute, expecting something to come charging out of the woods and in the direction of the cabin. But nothing came. And the wailing didn’t start again. The leaves on the brush near the forest edge stopped jostling. Whatever it was had left.
Then something scratched at the screen door.
The Revenant: A Horror in Dodsville Page 47
